The term M2M (Machine-to-Machine) generally refers to data communications between machines in the form of telemetry or telematics. M2M communication can take place over Ethernet, Public Switched Telephone networks (PSTN) or the Internet but in recent years an increasing proportion of M2M communication now takes place over public wireless data networks such as the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS).
In the M2M world most communication is message based and is therefore suitable for going through a proxy. FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings illustrates schematically a known M2M system comprised of a Broker 1, one or several Applications 2, and one or more Sensor Networks (SN) 3. Each SN 3 comprises at least one data collecting device (not shown) and communicates with the Broker 1 via an SN Gateway 4. The Broker 1 collects data from all SNs 3 and provides data services to the Applications 2, performing data processing and aggregation services so that the Applications 2 can be provided with processed data from any of a number of SNs 3. The Broker 1 also provides data access authorization and a data market place for individual sensor network providers. In such a system, the SN Gateway 4 of each individual SN 3 can be a very simple device, only authenticating and communicating with the Broker 1.
With the rapid deployment of SNs and increased usage of M2M communication, the data processing workload of a Broker can be significant, especially when streaming data is sent from a SN. It is desirable to address this issue.
The article “Unified Management of Heterogeneous Sensor Networks in the Atlantis Framework” by Vesselin Arnaudov (Department of Computer Science, Brown University, Undergraduate Honors Theses, online) discloses a method of processing of data in a machine-to-machine system including a broker entity serving as a link between a node of a sensor network providing the data and an application node requesting the data.